I've been consistently doing Rippetoe's Starting Strength program every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for two months. Today (Thursday), I've got an appointment with an instructor to go through some technique, which will probably involve a lot of reps with moderate weights in all of the base lifts.

4 Answers
4

Just see how you feel on Friday. If you ended up doing some work on Thursday and feel tired, then wait until Saturday. If you're feeling great, then just go for it.

You can also start the workout on Friday and judge by your warmups & first work set. If they go off without a hitch, continue the workout. If you're dragging through them & they are harder then they should be, then just stop and wait a day.

Generally speaking, when in doubt err on the side of an extra day of rest. Just don't use a little tiredness as an excuse to regularly postpone workouts.

I'm not worried about getting tired, but about over-training.
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user26Dec 8 '11 at 20:21

@Tim Right, I don't mean tired as in "sleepy" or even "non-energetic" so much as "my muscles don't have quite as much to give" as they usually do on workout day. Over-training is the same thing as under-recovery.
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Greg♦Dec 8 '11 at 20:39

Depends on how heavy you go. If you are keeping the weights light, and just working on form, you should be OK for Friday. That's particularly true if you just started with Starting Strength. There's a short period of time, where you could recover and be ready every day.

So here's my decision criteria:

Heavy workout? I need at least a full day of rest. Move it out one day.

Light workout? If I still feel like it was a light day when I'm done, I'll do my regularly scheduled time.

Unsure? give myself a full day of rest and move it out one day.

Either way, make sure you get some good sleep and eat enough for recovery.